Abduction and terrorism trial after boy found dead at New Mexico compound opens with mom’s testimony

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Federal prosecutors presented tearful testimony Tuesday from the mother of a sickly toddler who was whisked away from his Georgia home by relatives without her permission to a remote desert encampment in northern New Mexico where he died.

Four family members, including the boy’s aunts, are facing kidnapping or terrorism charges, or both, that stem from an August 2018 raid in search of the 3-year-old boy at a squalid encampment near the Colorado line. Authorities said they found the suspects living with 11 hungry children without running water at the encampment encircled by berms of tires with an adjacent shooting range where guns and ammunition were seized.

The badly decomposed body of Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj was eventually found in an underground tunnel at the compound.

Abdul-Ghani’s mother, Hakima Ramzi, recounted her love and devotion to a cheerful son who lived with severe developmental disabilities and frequent seizures — and her shock when husband, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, and his sibling accused her of casting spells on the boy.

“He accused me of black magic, I’m not that type of a woman to practice black magic,” said Ramzi, a native of Morocco who spoke in broken English.

Ramzi said her denials fell on deaf ears. She said her husband and his sister traveled abroad to learn more about alternative healing based on the Quran.

After she demanded a divorce, Ramzi said that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj took their son to a park and never returned. She tried unsuccessfully, she said, to track them by phone before turning to police and then child protective services.